Intel's Matrix RAID vs Microsoft's Windows RAID

[ApariChitt]

I am the owner of a small IT firm and need to know more about windows RAID or Matrix RAID. I would like to know the difference between the Intel’s Matrix RAID and Microsoft’s Windows RAID. I have heard that the system performance of windows RAID is not satisfactory in case of operating system like windows 7. So if you have tested any of these technologies and are really aware of their features then I would like to know more about them.

[Kickapoo]

I have had the chance to work for a company who were using Intel’s Matrix RAID. It is a kind of storage technology which includes features to enhance performance and improve data security on hard drives. This includes four “SATA advanced host controller interface”, with the “native command queuing” in hardware. The “native command queuing” is a technology which enhances the disk performance by optimizing data requests on the disk.

[switchblade327]

Using the Microsoft Windows RAID technology you can now easily raid your hard disk to increase the system performance. In a striped volume (RAID 0) areas are combined with free space from multiple disks (between 2 and 32) into a single logical volume. If data is written to a striped volume, the disks will not be described sequentially, but the data is distributed evenly to all disks. Thus in this way the disk performance on a RAID 0 volume is higher than other disk configurations. Administrators prefer striped volume when the write and read speed plays an important role. On a striped volume all file systems such as FAT, FAT32 or NTFS can be used.

[Abenaki]

Intel’s Matrix RAID is the ultimate option as its feature of “Native Command Queuing” improves disk performance by optimizing multiple data requests to a hard drive maps. This feature analyzes the individual records and arranges them so that it can read the disk information of each file in only one disk rotation. So a RAID works from PATA and SATA hard drives without NCQ, as the PATA controller is not the appropriate protocol functions that AHCIs are aware of.

[Illinois]

To run the Windows RAID application, you will be required to convert the drive to a Dynamic Disk. In case you are working on windows server 2003 then you can convert the the drive into dynamic disk after the installing the disk as “Basic”. If you want to create Raid 0 in windows server 2003 then following are the conditions :
- At least two hard disk drives should be available and can have IDE, SCSI, or mixed architecture.
- Any disks that are in the striped volume must be dynamic disks.
- The free space must be exactly the same in terms of size and type of file system, on all media.